Friday, March 26, 2010

Time to Pile On

No doubt about it -- Bibi is in trouble. After insulting the Obama administration, Bibi ran to Washington to hear the adoring chirping of AIPAC and Congress, and then drove over to his home away from home - the White House. But wait Bibi -- its time for a little Chicago-style politics: "you shit on my alderman, I will shitstorm all over you in spades." So Bibi was humiliated in more-than-exact-measure at 1600 Pennsylvania (and at almost the same moment, at 10 Downing) and then was sent home to his residence in Jerusalem a disemboweled "ally." No sooner did Bibi get home to his right-wing coalition of home builders (is Bibi running a nation or a fly-by-night real estate development project?) than Hamas decides it's time to test Bibi the pugnacious epostulator to see what the former furniture salesman is really made of. People are starting to die on the Gaza-Israel border, troops and tanks and rockets are going every which way, and -- oh no! -- Passover is coming ("tell Barack we can't answer him just yet - we must take a break because we cannot engage in serious negotiations with anyone while we are constipated with matzoh"). Then it will be Holocaust Memorial Day, Independence Day, Shavuot -- and then before you know it, it's the High Holidays, and then Sukkot, and then -- whoops! -- it's mid-term US elections.

Taking a cue from the Yitzhak Shamir playbook, Bibi is now going to try a diplomatic rope-a-dope, and hope that the much friendlier Republicans can hand this Barack Obama fella a midterm setback. Seven months is a long time to say you'll do something, anything; while all the while do absolutely nothing. "Hell," thinks Bibi, "Shamir did it -- dammit, so can I."